Fed-up Mexicans the new law enforcers near Acapulco

Feb. 20, 2013
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Community police officers in San Luis Acatl√°n, Mexico, fix a truck they seized at a roadblock. The force patrols a rural area in southern Mexico with weapons and equipment it says are seized from suspects involved in the drug business and organized crime. / David Agren for USA TODAY

by David Agren, Special for USA TODAY

by David Agren, Special for USA TODAY

AYUTLA DE LOS LIBRES, Mexico ‚?? Not far from the glimmering water of Acapulco, the hills to the northeast of this tourist destination were marauded by criminal gangs that did as they pleased without interference from courts and police.

Sergio Loza Moreno says merchants paid the gangs protection money, teachers had to turn over part of their paychecks to them, and ranchers were charged a "tax" for each head of cattle.

"It was a cancer that kept growing," said Loza, owner of four roast chicken stalls here. "People saw the police as part of that cancer."

In January, masked vigilantes armed with hunting rifles, sticks and machetes became the law in this municipality of indigenous settlements. Fed up with the police, people in 36 communities have organized to take responsibility for security in their villages since Jan. 1, according to the newspaper Milenio.

The emergence of these community police forces reflects the ongoing difficulties in combating organized crime in Mexico and the depth of the distrust in the institutions that are supposed to protect people from the gangs.

It also may impede the preferred priorities of President Enrique Pe√Īa Nieto, who is trying to focus on the economy and is speaking sparingly about security since his Dec. 1 inauguration.‚??

"The situation continues being as bloody as ever ‚?¶ (but) they're not speaking as much about this sort of news," says Raymundo D√≠az, director of an Acapulco-based human rights group, the Collective Against Torture and Impunity.

Unlike his predecessor, Felipe Calder√≥n, Pe√Īa Nieto has shunned the hard language against the drug lords here and talks more of stopping crimes affecting ordinary citizens such as kidnapping and extortion.

He has promised to improve security by spending more on social programs instead of sending more soldiers into the streets.

Years of violence and victimization have convinced many Mexicans in crime-plagued towns that the government is no longer a source for a solution. They are arming and going after criminals themselves.

"In many cases, the desperation of these groups is linked ‚?¶ to the inability of the government to enforce the law," said Roberto Campa, an undersecretary in the Interior Ministry.

The development has some concerned.

The National Human Rights Commission warned about "the existence of armed groups with interests distinct from self-defense."

"Nothing justifies that a group of persons decides to take justice into their own hands and attempt ‚?¶ to place themselves above the government," it said.

Vigilantism is not new to rural Mexico. Rebellion has been ebbing and flowing for years in Guerrero state, which includes Ayutla and some of Mexico's poorest municipalities. Guerrilla groups operate in the region and there have been massacres, blamed on the military.

"This is one of the zones of the country where the state has traditionally been absent," says Alejandro Hope, security analyst with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness.

In Ayutla, the people rose up after the Jan. 5 kidnapping of a community leader. Villagers armed themselves, set up roadblocks and apprehended suspects. The towns organized tribunals for the accused for alleged crimes that ranged from drug trafficking to kidnapping to extortion.

The Union of Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero State was the main organizer of the uprising in Ayutla, and it held as many as 54 detainees in secret locations. On Tuesday, the group turned over 20 of its detainees to the authorities, Guerrero Gov. √Āngel Aguirre told Radio Formula. The rest were released.

Rogelio Teliz, lawyer with the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center office in Ayutla, understands the risks of vigilantism. But he says he also understands why the people took matters into their hands and points out that it worked.

"This movement is an example to the Mexican government that people, without means, acting on their own, can guarantee a state of security," he says.

Community police are not without precedent in Guerrero. A force known as the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC) ‚?? which has been at odds with the leadership of the Ayutla group ‚?? has patrolled seven municipalities since 1995. It was formed to calm a region rife with crimes ranging from cattle rustling to road robberies to a disturbing number of sexual assaults.

CRAC's justice coordinator in the municipality of San Luis Acatl√°n, Pablo Guzm√°n, says crime has plummeted 90% since the community police's formation. Patrols of uniformed and unpaid police have confronted the powerful drug cartels, destroying poppy plantations for heroin and stopped a shipment of 1,500 pounds of marijuana.

CRAC members now patrol corn-farming communities in pickups, armed with pistols and assault rifles that were seized from gangs at CRAC checkpoints. CRAC also detains suspects that Guzm√°n says are judged by local leaders and later "re-educated" through work on community projects that can last more than two years.

Guzm√°n brushes off claims that his police officers are not acting professionally and says they have training in basic policing, first aid and human rights.

"They know the zone, they know the community, they know whose is acting out of line," he said.

Ayutla appeared quite calm on one recent day. Villagers kept their doors open well into the evening.

Sergio Loza Moreno says he endorses the community police approach. But he suspects many of those detained were low-level figures, not criminal kingpins, and that violence may return.

"They're probably waiting for a lapse before reappearing," he says of the criminals.